Broken Dawn

**Terror* is a strange concept.*

We fear death when it doesn't stare us in the face. When at rest, it can be considered for all the losses the world will feel, for our abrupt end, things unfinished, discovering the afterlife, being judged- but when caught in jaws bearing down on us, "fear" and "death" are too complicated to understand. Terror- the sense of ultimate failure and the loss of all we hold dear- is much more abundant. Terror tests our limits, and allows us to either push harder to fight it, or fail and allow it to overcome us as it makes its dread promises come true.

Lodged between massive fangs, forelegs struggling to keep the maw held open, he quiets this familiar train of thought. With air so hot it burns singeing his dock in regular blasts, he must focus to find his escape; a focus broken as two fangs connect through the flesh beneath his left covets, slicing through nerve in a pain so intense he cannot help but

scream, though somehow he resisted.

The grass was gone. He rested, now fully on his back, engulfed in something soft, hot, moist.. incredibly hot. Strange scents were subtle on the still air, and something tugged on his left wing, but gently. It felt alive, but he felt no malice from it, so with eyes closed he listened carefully for any clues.

"Agh! Eh oot szizched! Oo ooh sizk ay eughd da ushkind ood?"

"Es bur alondalie utlulidored. Eu rinr oueh phus dradir ahs eiern froued... ehd areigh beu uhurm eiam eavoit eu rewus oip eidbeain..."

He struggled to make sense of the strange sounds. It was obvious as the chatter continued that there were two mares speaking, and judging from the hooves moving over his wing and cannon he seemed to be the topic. Why couldn't he understand them? He was fluent in... something...

The sweltering heat engulfing him was like claws raking at his sides overwhelming. Involuntarily he stiffened, and he kept his eyes glued shut as he heard his captors jump back. He struggled to breathe as the sickly smell of his own sweat wafted past his muzzle. A cool hoof again touched him, sending a sharp pain through his forehead, and just as quickly was replaced by something so intensely cold and soothing it caused a shudder through his spine.

The worried voices became softer, more hurried, and the scorching pressure from his body was lifted away. More talk, and his croup lifted by hooves... a startled murmur, and the hooves were gone again; something light and cool enveloped him as the voices died away and everything inside his mind became silent.

A welcome silence. Not the calm before the storm, not the eerie stillness when even insects fear to chirp, but the gentler one that doesn't set your skin crawling. It is the peace of safety- one that is quickly broken by the screams of a stallion that is trying to stand, only to find that his scorched flank is sticking to the flagstones he rests on.

The pain is unexpected. This time he makes it to his hooves with only a far more masculine grunt accompanying him. He turns his head- an audible pop, a stiffness; he must have been unconscious for some time- to survey the damage. The coat up to his hip has been annihilated, a blackened, sooty ring left between his light azure and the blistered bare skin of his flank.

The burn is painful... he notes this with some small relief. Hardly a vain creature, but still; it will be chill if the hair doesn't regrow.

This relief is followed by a realization that brings an amused smile to his face- it's true, what they say: a cutie mark is only fur deep.

It's a humorous observation to the stallion, and the smile opens wide with laughter as he makes another.

The creature's tongue (so thick and slick and fleshy) recently made him recoil in disgust as he struggled for his life, rudely crushing and moistening him from his tail to his tender bits- intimate parts of him which, while gluey with saliva and blood, are completely intact and spared from the flames.

The stallion laughs deep and long as the sky turns to dusk, his head thrown back with the joy of survival and the thrill of victory. He laughs as the blood pooling around his ankles begins to harden; he laughs as flies buzz around the massive body of his fallen foe and (the ones he couldn't save(the ones he was too late for(the ones he failed)its unfortunate victims. He laughs even as he thinks about how (insane)odd he must look doing so knowing full well the carnage that surrounds him.

He laughs because deep inside, the terror is gone once more.. and the very idea of such a thing just makes you wanna.. haha.. ha.. heh..

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!

* * *

He drifted.

Time became an anarchic concept while his body struggled against the fever that ravaged it. Light would fade and return almost at a whim through the pane glass window near his bed; sometimes he would begin a train of thought only to see the sun's glow depart and come again before it was finished, leaving him at a loss as to what the beginning of it had been. On other occasions, time would practically stop (though he was certain it was only be comparison), and it was during these times he came to know of his caretakers.

The visits of a tender hooved mare with a pink mane were perhaps the most dreaded. These moments stood out with remarkable clarity for the pain that often accompanied them, as she would poke at the wounds on his forehead and ear. Bloodied bandages would be replaced with ones new and pristine, and liquids and creams from jars would be administered each time. These containers he quickly came to know as "bad brown" and "good white", with the first bringing that horrible pain like lightning through his nerves as the old dressings were removed and the second providing a smooth slip back down to the distant thunder he had come to prefer. This mare was without fail the one to tend to this task, though sometimes under the watch of a curious unicorn, a stallion of a creamy caramel complexion and darker mane, always clad in white. Though he couldn't understand their speech, a mocking tone was often evident in this one's voice, and he came to enjoy watching him depart with his unsteady gait.

The others were less common, though the ones who came never did so only once. His favorite was an energetic pegasus with a hue not unlike his own; but her mane and tail! The colors ran the full spectrum. Seeing them against her sky blue coat brought back memories of

it's beautiful, the air beneath his wings, caressing every feather as he soars into

a real rainbow, and although she seemed timid at first, the smile that would cross his face when he watched her move encouraged her  to be less cautious. After a few visits, she'd take to doing what tricks her astonishing agility would allow in the small room, leaving behind a prismatic trail for a brief second and providing a movement of air that was otherwise sorely lacking. Once when she arrived with the caramel stallion present, a brief conversation left her with a flush on her cheeks, though it was later during this visit that she first took time to carefully climb up beside him and preen his feathers. It was an overwhelmingly pleasant experience that would be repeated every time thereafter, with the care, precision and respect that only a pegasus could provide. The scent of her oil would linger, extending the comfort she provided for a bit longer. On the first occasion, there were so many dead sheaths to be removed that it took the mare a good while to do so properly, and when she reached the deadened end of his left wing she had stopped. The question on her face and in her voice was obvious as he met her gaze, and after some seconds she gave a tiny nod, a single quick nuzzle to his chin, and then returned to her task.

The other pegasus was far less talkative. He initially confused her for the Jar Bearer, the pink in their manes being so similar, but after some time he would see her skirting in and out of the room on occasion, wings often in a state of alarm and her pale yellow frame somehow blending in with the wooden walls and floor. Her movements were always directed to some task or another, whether it were to place a stack of neatly folded bedding in the small closet behind him or to prop open the window for a while to alleviate the smell of sweat, urine and disease that would sometimes build up. She once made her presence far more noticeable as she struggled to catch a small white rabbit who had invaded, hell bent to express opinions that were clearly not welcoming in its shrill cry; he felt certain he had hallucinated the experience until he noticed the small tuft of yellow down she had left behind when she had dived reaching under the bed itself. It stayed, while the mare had not; it stayed as the light left the room and darkness filled it; it stayed as the flicker of candlelight that normally accompanied his long night watch vanished; and when he awoke from

the weight is unbearable. The stallion feels the massive clawed appendage crushing the breath from his lungs, and struggles to find any purchase he can as he looks up into the screaming red eyes of

a horrible nightmare, it had been replaced by the wing of the yellow pegasus herself. With her cannon wrapped around his barrel, forehead buried in his shoulder, she had sobbed; a beautiful, wretched sound that no tongue cannot comprehend. After a moment and a deep heaving breath, she suddenly stiffened, and a jump backwards let him see her face clearly for the first time. Eyes of the richest teal no Brayzilian tourmaline could compare to, made more radiant than the purest cut could ever match twitched sporadically over sodden cheeks to which a few of his own tear coated hairs clung; and like so many other aspects of his fevered mind, she was gone.

He did eventually become aware of the fever as the days drifted to (years? moments?) weeks. It was his least rational companion that brought about the realization that so much of what he perceived and remembered could simply not be real- a spirit that always seemed to appear as he was drifting out or in from unconsciousness. Her eyes would glimmer like sapphires, diamonds and emeralds as she looked into his own, her phantom hooves so often prodding and pulling at his limbs and hair when sleep made him his most vulnerable. She would sing in a voice like fluid, as if heard underwater, or perhaps more like the din of quiet conversation in a crowded room, while her coat would shift through various hues to match her tone. Scenes of unfamiliar memories would invade his mind during these moments... an autumn day, the smell of pumpkins growing in fresh soil ...I love you...; a carnation pressed gently into his hoof, hidden behind a gristmill ...I want you to be happy...; a bouquet of various fragrant wildflowers scattered across pure marble ...so special to me... Her visits were uniquely bizarre experiences, though he began to suspect they were in fact his muddled interpretation of real occurrences; wouldn't he be able to understand the words of a ghost? He also knew that somepony had been tending to his hygiene, as  his coat was consistently groomed and his bedclothes would every so often change in hue. It was early one morning (or late one evening? the facing of the window made it difficult to decide, and he could not see through it from where he lay) that he awoke to an interesting addition to his dwelling. A landscape of rolling green hills and interspersed forest surrounded a small town comprised almost entirely of pale buildings, wooden trim and thatched roofs on them all. The one exception was an relatively extravagant wooden dome decorated with colorful streamers which towered over the surrounding structures. The frame it resided within was a strange affair; obviously the product of a skilled wood worker, but painted a jarring shade of pink and studded evenly with a variety of stunning gemstones with which the light would play at some hours. If he were aware at just the right moments of the day, he'd see the light painting a prismatic display across the ceiling in the pattern of a rainbow- an effect that he endeavored to observe every chance he could from the first time he saw it.

It was during one of his less lucid moments that a new face arrived; bold and purple, she would be the one to finally break apart the paralysis that held him, and everything after so much time would drastically change.